


From High to Low Quickly

by Dreaming_in_Circles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Drabble, I said SUICIDE, Internal Monologue, Mentions of torture/brainwashing, Post-CA:TWS, Shifting points in time, Suicide, if that makes sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 11:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1509599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreaming_in_Circles/pseuds/Dreaming_in_Circles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's standing in the rain, on the balcony of Stark Tower, smoking a cigarette. It was raining then, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From High to Low Quickly

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd; I did a quick once-over, but no promises.
> 
> **WARNINGS:** (and, unfortunately, spoilers) internal monologue contemplating suicide, major character death. I'm sure you can connect the dots. Read the tags, basically.  
>  On that cheery note, I give you _From High to Low Quickly._

He's standing in the rain, on the balcony of Stark Tower, smoking a cigarette. It's not real rain - otherwise he'd be inside with the cigarette - but it's misting just enough to coat everything in a cold layer of water. Including him.

He takes a long draw on the fag - the word appears suddenly in his mind, he doesn't know where from - and holds the toxins in his lungs. He imagines he can feel them oozing into his system. The thought doesn't disgust him; this shit is probably the least of his worries about what's gone into his body. Banner still can't identify a dozen different compounds running through his blood stream.

It was raining then, too.

 

_He was running as fast as he could, torn and wrecked, across the roofs of the city. His metal hand was clenched tight. Stop, fight, finish the mission._

_His flesh hand had no such ideas. So when the blond man tackled him from behind, it was that hand that collided with the ground and his metal hand that flew behind to pull him off._

 

He releases his breath slowly and turns as he feels eyes on him. Sam is standing on the other side of the glass, watching him. He's wearing that look he sometimes has; a mixture of mistrust and sadness and confusion. He doesn't know what to do with him, Bucky knows. He sees it in Sam's eyes, hears it in his voice, gleans it from the snippets of private conversations he catches.

Sam walks to the door and pushes it open, joining Bucky on the roof. He turns away from Sam and takes another pull on the cigarette.

"Nat says the DoD still wants to arrest you." Sam says finally. Bucky sucks down another breath of smoke.

 

_He threw the man over his shoulder. He rolled gracefully and landed on his feet. No shield. No uniform. This was the man from the bridge, not the man from the helicarrier. No, this was the man from when he shot the black man with the eye patch-_

_No, that wasn't right either. He screamed, in anger, in frustration, and the man looked desolate. He looked like his heart was breaking._

 

"Let them try." He says, smoke curling out of his mouth as he speaks.

 

_He charged the man, because neither of them were armed at that point. The blond ducked his first punch, but he grabbed his leather jacket and slammed him to the roof. He heard the blond's head hit the asphalt with a satisfying thwack. But he was far from down and out, pushing him up with his legs, over his head. He tumbled, rolling just as gracefully as the blond, and spun to a ready crouch. The blond was much slower getting up, not even making an effort at protecting himself. He was holding a hand to the back of his head, red staining the water-covered roof._

 

He knew the moment he said it that Sam was pissed. He turned to Bucky angrily, his body language betraying his frustration. "Do you care at all about what you did?"

Bucky refuses to look at him. "A month ago you thought I did."

"A month ago you were acting like you had PTSD. Now it's more like your just jerking off."

Bucky doesn't say anything. He takes another pull on the cigarette.

 

_"Stop this, Bucky, please." The blond said, voice slurred. His eyes were dilated unevenly; concussion. He was on the ropes-_

_That conjured up images of a skinny little kid a foot and a half shorter with blood on his face and a spark in his eyes. With the same face as the blond._

 

"You got to give me something to work with, man, or I can't convince them that you're on our side." Sam continues his original argument.

"Something like what?" Bucky drops the cig- he drops the fag and stamps it out with his foot.

"Come to the VA meetings. That'd be a good place to start." He suggests. Bucky shrugs.

 

_"What the fuck?!" He yelled with feeling. "What the fuck did you do to me?!" He charged the blond again, and with a concussion he could no longer dodge. They went down like a sack of potatoes and he hit him, hit him, hit him. With his metal arm. Like on the helicarrier. No, this man was not on the helicarrier; this man was one the bridge-_

_No, that wasn't right!_

_He stopped hitting and slammed his fist into the asphalt next to the blond's head. He screamed, his face mere centimeters away from the blond's. What the_ hell _did they do to him?!_

 

"And find somebody to talk to."

Bucky snorts and shakes his head doggedly. "We've been over this." He says through a deranged smile.

"It'll help." Sam insists, placing a hand on his flesh shoulder and pushing slightly, trying to look Bucky in the face. "Take it from someone with personal experience."

Bucky looks him in the eye, water dripping down his long hair, completely serious. "I'm not you."

 

_"Step away from him!" Someone yelled, and he turned his head slightly to see a black man with a gun pointed at them. A pistol. This was the man from the helicarrier with the wings. This was the man from the bridge who didn't matter._

_He pushed himself up on his knees, not touching the blond at all, but just centimeters from doing so. The black gestured with his gun and he stood, stepping away from the blond, and closer to the black, but he didn't notice. He was too worried about the blond._

 

"No you're not." Sam agrees after a long moment. He looks down, breaking the eye contact, and shakes his head. "Fine."

He steps back, takes one last, long look at Bucky, then turns his back and heads to the door.

"Did he trust you?"

 

_He wasn't paying attention, he was trying to get the blond's attention, calling him 'Cap,' calling him 'Steve.' He watched his distraction with contempt - stupid mistake - and crouched slowly, smoothly, to pick up a stray hunk of asphalt. He adjusted his stance and shifted the rock to his metal hand and pulled back and threw. The man finally took notice, but the black missile was already on it's way to him at velocities challenging a baseball pitcher - a_ what? - _and he collapsed, instantly unconscious when it hit him. His gun went flying._

 

Sam turns back to him, a frown on his face at Bucky's question. "What?"

"Did he trust you?" Bucky repeats, watching the other carefully.

Sam shrugs and looks lost in the conversation. "I'd like to think so."

"Is that why you do this? Even though you would like to kill me yourself?"

 

_The blond had miraculously staggered to his feet by the time he got his hands on the handgun. It was familiar and comfortable, his first since the helicarrier. He spun and pointed it at the blond's chest. He blinked, staggered, looked drunk, and slowly took stock of the situation._

_The blond's eyes travelled from the gun in his hand to the face of the owner. The gun was in his metal hand._

_"I know this isn't you." The blond said, his words almost incoherent. "I know you remember, Bucky."_

_He cocked the gun._

_The blond's eyes roamed over the gun again and returned to his own. He was... in pain. Deeper than the skin. He knew that pain._

_"Then just do it. If you don't remember, just do it."_

_He blinked, confirmed his aim, and pulled the trigger._

 

"I don't kill you because of what he said." Sam replies cooly. "But I don't think anything can save you. I don't think Bucky Barnes is in there anymore; I don't care what you call yourself, or what other people think."

 

_He dropped the gun. The black man was sitting up again but not moving any farther. He could hear police sirens close; someone must have seen part of the fight. He wondered what part._

_He walked forward, to the man in the jeans and the T-shirt and the leather jacket. The man with the blond hair. Hair he used to ruffle; shoulders he used to hug; a body he used to worry about. Was that true? Could that be this man?_

_No. This was blond hair forever hidden under a blue helmet; shoulders that dispatched one enemy after another with ruthless efficiency; a body and mind he would follow into battle. Was _that_ true?_

_"You killed him." The black man said, disbelief thick in his voice. He ignored it._

 

Sam turns away. He walks through the doors and doesn't linger, disappearing to a different part of the tower. Good.

He turns back to the edge of the balcony. It's not a proper balcony, there's no railing; it's where Stark lands when he's in a suit. Bucky takes a deep breath and rolls his neck out.

The one thing the Winter Soldier was supposed to do was survive. Beyond everything, the asset was to endure, come back, start again. Bucky pulls out another fag and lights up. Cigarettes were prohibited; alcohol was prohibited; empty calories were prohibited.

He takes a long pull, feels the toxins in his lungs.

He was to survive because he was the one thing they could never replace. There was only one asset even close to his ability, and they'd lost her years before they lost him. He was... perfection itself. And they needed him. To 'shape the century.'

"Bullshit." He mutters to himself and pulls on the fag again.

Survival was a basic instinct; he was very good at that, once the defiance went away. Oh yes, Sam, he thinks acidly, I remember a lot more than you know. Because the torture and the brainwashing had been the first to come back as his mind sought answers and found dogma, and questioned where that came from because it didn't sit well in his stomach.

Neither does killing the blond man.

He drops the fag and steps it out of existence. Fitting, he thinks. And he looks up at the sky, because he's been waiting for the rain.

He starts walking forward, still looking at the sky, and hears the thud of someone hitting glass and ignores it and keeps walking and his foot misses a step and he's tumbling, falling, air rushing past his ears. An uncontrolled flight, unlike every other time he's gone from high to low quickly.

He always judged distances, angles, landing spots, speed, targets. This was just falling. No. This was flying. Flying was freedom, and this was his final rebellion. He thinks he remembers trying this before, but it hadn't worked. Well, fuck you, Hydra. Can't stop me now. Just like no one could stop the blond man.

After a moment of initial panic, he spreads his arms and yells - not for pain, not for anger, but for pure, unadulterated _joy_ \- for the first time he can remember. Then he remembers a ride, with that skinny kid, screaming and laughing in joy, wind whistling in his ears. And he laughs and he _smiles._

 

_It was cold and he had a gun, standing on a wind-blown cliff._

_"Do you remember that time on Coney Island when I made you ride the Cyclone?"_

_"Yeah, and I threw up." The blond man next to him answered, a smile in his voice. "Why?"_

_"I"m starting to wonder if this is payback."_

_"Now why would I do that?" He got a real smile that time, and it looked good._

 

And then it goes black.


End file.
